Re: Patch: fix lock contention for HASHHDR.mutex

> This is the point where I think I am missing something about patch.
> As far as I can understand, it uses the same freelist index
> (freelist_idx) for allocating and putting back the entry, so I think
> the chance of increment in one list and decrement in another is there
> when the value of freelist_idx is calculated differently for the same
> input, is it so, or there is something else in patch which I am
> missing?

You are right, nentries _can't_ be negative unless we are using getpid()
for calculating freelist_idx, since same index of nentries[] is used
when we add (increment) and remove (decrement) element from/to hash
table. The fact that we also borrow elements from other freelists if
there is no more elements in our freelist doesn't change anything.

> One idea is to jigger things so that we maintain a count of the total
> number of entries that doesn't change except when we allocate, and
> then for each freelist partition we maintain the number of entries in
> that freelist partition. So then the size of the hash table, instead
> of being sum(nentries) is totalsize - sum(nfree).

This is an interesting idea. Still I strongly disagree that is should
be implemented in this concrete patch and discussed in this concrete
thread. Obviously such type of change deserves a separate research and
discussing since it has nothing to do with performance and since we
agreed that "change LOG2_NUM_LOCK_PARTITIONS value" and "change the
calling convention for ShmemInitHash()" patches should be implemented
separately. I added it to my TODO list.

Once again I suggest we merge this patch already:

http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CA+Tgmobtf9nH566_jjs=jrTyMq5HdQdaRF5j7o+AbdOWQHE_Ow@mail.gmail.com

I have a strong feeling that we are just wasting our time here.

--
Best regards,
Aleksander Alekseev
http://eax.me/